Mayan December (19 page)

CHAPTER 31

Nixie stood on a dark rock by the lagoon in Akumal, enjoying the early afternoon warmth in spite of the clouds bunching above her like gray beach balls. She glanced up at Oriana, wrinkling her nose. “For someplace called “place of turtles,” you have to admit that it’s a bit of a disappointment.”

Oriana put her hands on her hips and leaned down, so serious she was funny. “Did you expect lightening to strike twice? We’ve already seen three turtles. Nesting season was over in October. Three is good.” She frowned, suddenly serious. “Especially now.” She waved her hand at the sea floor. Earlier,

she had pointed out invasive corals and algae that loved the warmer waters but strangled native species, and shown Nixie bleached coral bones that used to be vivid red or yellow.

Nixie looked down, frustrated. Why did she have to be born just when the world was dying? She liked Mexico because the green, watery jungle felt so much more alive than most places in Arizona. The turtles had made her feel magical yesterday, as if she mattered. She’d watched for them all day today. The big turtle hadn’t come to her, and neither had the swarms of adolescents. None of the turtles they did see had treated her as anything special at all. In fact, she couldn’t see any right now.

A blue tang swam by just below her, a bit of sky against the white sand bottom. A bright spot surrounded her for a moment and moved on, a beam of light pouring through the clouds, one of many making parts of the lagoon so blue that others looked deeper and grayer. She wanted to draw. But she was afraid to get her pens out with the air so thick and heavy with impending rain.

It was the first time she’d been to Akumal, which Oriana called snorkelers paradise. They had seen parrotfish and tangs and angels, and had swum over nearby wavy corals on the beach, then had come here to snorkel the lagoon. It was pretty, but somehow the very ordinariness of the day seemed like a letdown. “Oriana?”

“Yes.”

“Did going back in time and finding the bead make you want to go again the next day? Or today? Do you miss it?”

Oriana waded into the shallow water, her orange water socks looking like goldfish on her feet. “Yes. But it scared me a little, too. What if we had been there at the wrong time and gotten in the middle of the fight you dreamed about?” She shrugged. “I don’t think that time is done with us yet anyway.”

Nixie was sure of it. She
knew
she’d see Hun Kan again. Unless she stopped it. But she wouldn’t. “But why us? Why me? I mean, I love it there, but I’m just a kid.”

A soft wind made Oriana brush the dark wisps of hair that had escaped her ponytail from her eyes. “Maybe that’s exactly why. You are a kid. I mean, you haven’t been scared yet.”

Not really. Especially not at first. But it was getting more confusing and more people were tangled up in it, and Ian was gone and hadn’t come back. “Well, the closer we get to tomorrow, the more I think maybe I should be scared.”

“Do you think being scared will help?” Oriana asked.

“No.” A school of tiny fish flitted through a water-filtered sunbeam below Nixie. “But I wish I knew what was going to happen. Maybe then I wouldn’t be scared at all.” She skipped a stone across the water. “The turtles were trying to tell me something, but I still don’t know what.”

Oriana leaned down and picked up a shell, held it out toward Nixie. “Take this. Look at the inside.”

Nixie sat down and turned the shell over and over in her hand. It was the kind that curled inside itself, tapering from a rough pointy top to a thin, almost elegant bottom. “I can’t see the inside. It’s a pearly white going toward it, but the center is hidden.”

“So you’d have to break the shell to see it?”

Nixie nodded. “It’s too perfect. I don’t want to.”

Oriana took the shell from her and put it back where she found it. “Every day has its own center that you have to imagine, but you can’t know about in advance. The turtles were like that yesterday. Would it have been as magical to swim with them if you woke up knowing you’d see so many?”

Nixie shook her head. “It’d be like today, when I thought I’d see more.”

Oriana smiled, her eyes suddenly unfocused, like she was looking at something inside herself. “My mother taught me to like every day. She’s dead now, but I know she had a great life. Because every day was the center of a shell for her.”

Like the turtles yesterday, a surprise . . . she wanted to see more turtles today, or even the same ones again. Except . . . “I guess I wouldn’t want to swim with so many turtles every day, anyway. It was hard to move my legs.”

Laughter brought focus back to Oriana’s eyes, and she splashed over to sit beside Nixie.

Oriana wasn’t that old. Younger than Mom, anyway. What must it be like to be without a mom? Sure, Nix fought with her mom, but she couldn’t imagine life without her. Nixie patted Oriana’s knee. “I’m sorry your mom died.”

Oriana shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m not. I mean, I miss her. Like I said, I know she isn’t sorry. She accepted everything.” Oriana raised her eyes and looked out over the lagoon, and it felt like Oriana had gone somewhere else, gotten light, like maybe the real Oriana was in the sea. “I think we need to appreciate every day. That’s what our time teaches us. You know the world is changing fast. It’s hard to know how long we’ll live.”

“Because the climate’s changing and the animals are dying?”

“And the wars. The poverty. You don’t see it here,” she swept a hand around at the beach full of tourists, “even though the rich people are nervous, too. But before I agreed to watch you, I sometimes helped out at a free medical clinic. More people are getting diseases, but more people are getting cured, too. There’s hope.” She let her voice trail off, and her eyes had gone all unfocused again.

Nixie had questions about Ian and the medical clinic and Oriana’s life. Too many to know which to ask. She dangled one foot in the water and sat quietly.

Oriana continued. “So we just have to enjoy every day’s magic.”

Maybe Oriana was talking to herself instead of to Nixie. A light breeze ruffled Oriana’s hair and fat raindrops landed on Nixie’s hand and her head. “Should we go sit in the car?” she asked.

Oriana smiled, although her mouth was a little drawn down. “No.” She walked out into the lagoon, rain plopping all around her, the drops so big and hard they splashed Oriana when they hit the nearby water.

A fish jumped.

Oriana kept walking.

Nixie swallowed, remembering Ian and her mom dancing on the sacbe the day before. She slipped her own yellow water socks on and stepped slowly into the lagoon, following Oriana. The uneven footing went from rock to sand to rock and she had to focus on each step.

The rain fell harder.

The lagoon wasn’t really deep anywhere, but Oriana found a place where it came up past her waist, then settled down into the water so only her head showed. Nixie stood beside her, her head just a little taller than Oriana’s. Oriana took Nixie’s face in her two hands and smiled. Her eyes shone. “See. We’re already wet. I don’t know what’s happening to us, to the world. To Ian. But we’re already wet now, and we just have to decide to like the rain, and to be curious. It’s a good, warm rain today.”

Nixie nodded, sure she understood in her gut even if her head didn’t really get it. But it was nice to sit with Oriana, in the warm lagoon in the warm rain, with the warm wind on her face and fish swimming by to tickle her feet.

She felt like a turtle.

CHAPTER 32

Ah Bahlam swayed unsteadily. The red-painted stones underfoot, the brush of other dancers around him, the calls of the crowd and even the drums were barriers between him and his Way. He rained drops of sweat onto the ground. He breathed in sickly-sweet smoke, the thickness of it slowing him, making every moment of failure available for him to examine. His first chance to dance his Way, to do the real work he’d been born and bred for, and his head felt thick with clouds while his feet seemed to wear rocks.

He circled the Venus platform once, twice, three times, and then lost track of how many times. Each step took long moments, each trip around seemed like a day.

Other dancers began to call and mimic their Ways. Macaw and monkey, hissing snake, even the grunts of the peccary. Perhaps he now danced alone, the only pure human left in the gathering.

Keeping his head high and his back straight became a struggle. The costume, light when he donned it, had turned to a heavy weight smashing him toward the floor. It kept his feet from moving easily and trapped his spirit in a heavy, human body.

He was going to shame his father, his people. Cauac. Hun Kan. Their faces danced in his imagination, frowning at him. Hun Kan’s eyes inside his mind became large and watchful. Cauac stood back at the edges of his consciousness, frowning.

Wings fluttered near his face, a streak of green and blue across the small bit of sky available to him from inside the mask.

Julu landed on his right shoulder with a thump, as if to say,
I am here, where is your jaguar?

If Julu could find him, why not his Way? He reached a hand up and offered his bird greeting.
Thank you
.

His vision began to feel, well,
wrong
, the colors to fuzz out and soften. The sky expanded and grew higher above him, the smells carried on the wind grew stronger: sweaty dancers, and beyond them, birds and orchids, peccaries and mice. The thirsty abundance of the jungle surrounding Chichén became an extension of his own soul, as if his bird brought the wild to him.

He had been looking outside himself, like when the jaguar led them home. The jaguar of the dance struggled to come to him from inside his belly, to infuse him from the center of being out. Strength seeped into his legs. Lightness and the wind filled him. He fell to all fours, his paws slick on the smooth surface of the ceremonial ground. His slow steps, so carefully matched to the heartbeat drum, fell into a rhythm of their own, almost gliding. Sound flooded his ears: the Ways all about him (footsteps of puma and peccary, light hopping of birds, slither of serpents), voices lifted and separated, becoming clear even from the far back in the crowd. A child’s voice, “See the jaguar,” and a man whispering, “I do, son.”

Air filled his stomach, his chest, bubbled through his lips in a soft growl and then ripped through his throat. The deep growl of the jungle cat.

He slid around each of the other Ways, around the great red floor, his head full of the scents of other animals and of the humans. He walked differently, still upright, but with the grace of the cat full inside of him. He felt lighter and stronger, his jaw heavy, and his vision shifted, nearly making him dizzy.

He danced into new muscles until a barrier stopped him.

The feathered serpent stood in his way. He had a sense it had faced others. A small part of him deep inside identified the high priest. That part lay quiet and watched as his jaguar crouched, its head low, shoulders hunched, feline eyes meeting the dark orbs of the winged snake writhing on the ground in front of it.

The jaguar should drop its head, pay respect.

It stayed completely still, the two great beasts watching each other in silence.

Drop
, Ah Bahlam encouraged himself, his jaguar. The two were now so one that he addressed them both at once.

Except it was stronger. It held its pose.

He struggled to make his silent inner voice as strong as possible.
Drop
.

The two beasts began to circle each other slowly.

You are my Way, you must obey me.

This man smells wrong.

Never had his Way spoken to him clearly.
He is K’ul’ukan
he reminded the jaguar in him.
K’ul’ukan.

His days are numbered and mine are not. Humans will always need jaguars to live, but they will be done with Feathered Serpent soon.

Ah Bahlam nearly gibbered. The Way was the path, the destiny. His destiny. He and this wild thing inside him did need to do something, help change something. But this was not the moment. He knew it. He wasn’t ready. He was too young. Why did the being that held him insist? Why did his own path show disrespect?

Control. Cauac had driven control into him. And the power of sacrifice.

He breathed in, feeling
his
energy fill the beast’s lungs.

Good. He could become a little more himself, a little less jaguar. Was it the dance and the smoke that made the jaguar far too strong in him today?

You are my Way and I am your Way. I doubt him, too.
An image flashed in his mind: Hun Kan being taken away.
But this moment he has the power. He has all the power of Chichén. We will have our day, but this day is his. For the sake of my people.

His legs straightened, his stance shifted. His Way was no longer bigger than he was, no longer stronger. Still, it fought him, slowing his movements. It did not agree.

The tail behind him flicked and twitched, an unfamiliar extension of his haunches.

In front of him, Feathered Serpent swayed, seeming to grow bigger.

The high priest’s eyes met his, commanding. The older man and his Way were clearly one, undoubtable. Strong. The feathered serpent in truth.

A god.

His head, the head of the jaguar, bowed as one, man and reluctant beast accepting the power of a greater being.

When he looked up, the high priest glared at him from inside the feathered serpent that rode him.
I’m not done with you
.

Nothing in the jaguar was afraid, and it gave no answer. Ah Bahlam quivered. He felt small compared to the two Ways.

K’uk’ulkan slithered around the jaguar. Ah Bahlam rose to two paws, still paws, his tail a balance, and danced.

The jaguar no longer fought him. He sensed it had gotten enough of what it wanted. For now.

The jaguar inside and outside of him, the jaguar that was him, flowed: paws barely touching the ground, back even, great head watching to both side of him, tail twitching. Its essence flooded him with joy in spite of his fears, joy so great it swept away all other emotion, taught him to glide and sway and roar.

The puma that shared the body of his father momentarily walked beside him, step for step, and a great growl of joy burst from his throat into the air. His father fell back and he circled a last time, walking now to the heartbeat drums, a man carrying the warm vestige of a beast inside him.

He stepped aside to the cleared place designated for the dancers to finish and fell to all fours and then to his stomach, prone between his uncle and Ah K’in’ca, gasping for breath.